Mathematics

I recently read an interesting article titled How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love. It tells the story of a PhD researcher who, tired of being ignored on a dating site, applied contemporary machine learning algorithms to find his optimal target groups of women and the optimal profiles to attract them. I was amused and horrified at the same time.

Suppose you have a set of observations (measurements) and want to assess how well they
fall into an ideal target range. Here are a few thoughts on how to go beyond the most
obvious measure: percentage of “in-range values”.

Our long journey through the infinite lands is coming to an end. What end is there to infinity, you ask? I’d have to put on a theologian’s hat to answer that. But as a mathematician, I can answer a question much more daring: what end is there to infinities?

Can there be any fact more shocking than that there are two infinities, one bigger than the other? Well, take a guess… But to crack the mystery underlying the existence of two different infinities, we first need to learn a little more from set theory… Monkeys, sheep, and leopards return!

We know that the natural numbers 1,2,3,… go off to infinity. But what happens when we consider negative numbers -1,-2,-3,… as well? How many numbers do we get? And what about fractions? Do we have multiple infinities?

Back in spring I started a series on interesting mathematical topics for the layman. Now I’m back with some fresh stuff.
I’m still aiming to explain thrilling areas of pure mathematics to a non-mathematical audience.